Owen is an Atlanta born and raised, and spent his childhood exploring Midtown’s urban forests, always keen to flip a rock or sniff a flower, or walk up an old brick tunnel. Around his 10th birthday, his family inherited a small cabin in the outskirts of Franklin, NC, right alongside the Cullasaja River. With both parents being schoolteachers, Owen had long summers and spent them rehabilitating the cabin, watching and learning from the land and river. Many formative memories were created there. Not only did he witness the beauty of the river, he also saw its wrath; twice Owen and his family had to dig mud out of the place, they were lucky to only have gotten flooded- one of the storms was the Peeks Creek disaster, which took lives and wreaked havoc on land and property. Bearing witness to that raw power gave Owen a respect for the river I hadn’t formerly known.
Fast forward and these mountains’ magnetism pulled Owen to Brevard, where he studied Environmental Science, focusing on Ecology and Geology and delving into the world of rare native orchids during my senior thesis. After graduating, he sought and found his dream job at Equinox, starting out under the guidance of Steve Melton and eventually working his way into his current position. Owen feels extremely fortunate to have enjoyed nearly 15 years of activating his interests and skills to effect land conservation, resource protection, and sustainable development across southern Appalachia, a dream come true.
Outside of Owen’s professional career, he is a devoted husband to a most wonderful woman, Sarah, a career public-school teacher of exceptional children, and incredible mother of their 10-year-old twins, Liam and Hazel; they are Owen’s guiding lights! Owen is active in his community and serves in local government, having been appointed and currently serving as Chair of the Transylvania Natural Resources Council, advisory to the Board of Commissioners, as well as appointed to the City of Brevard’s Public Works and Utilities Committee, advisory to the City Council. In both roles, Owen brings his expertise in natural resource conservation and management to the table and am a vocal advocate for protecting, enhancing, and restoring ecosystems. In doing so, he also acknowledges that the space available for human beings to live and thrive is rapidly diminishing, and thus there is an imperative to seek balance between those themes of preservation and development.
Overall, Owen is a lover of all things wild and chooses to spend his time on Earth exploring its beauty and mystery.
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